Reviews: Zelazny, Roger

Lord of Light —
Roger Zelazny

I
am afflicted with Zelazny-memory-loss syndrome: I have read many
books written by the late Roger Zelazny, but for some reason retain
little memory of them. It’s not because they are bad books, or even
boring books; they’ve been lauded by fans and pros alike. For
example, Roger Zelazny’s 1967 standalone novel Lord
of Light
won the Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula (losing to Delany’s The
Einstein Intersection)1.
Did I remember anything about it before I picked it up for a reread?
Not really.

Well,
that’s not completely true. There’s a truly wretched pun in the book:
that
I remembered, because apparently my brain hates me. And the beginning
has always stuck in my mind.

His
followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred
to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He
never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.

Sam’s
former friends and allies, on the other hand, have been positively
eager to claim divine status.

A Night in the Lonesome October —
Roger Zelazny

A
Night in the Lonesome October
is not Roger Zelazny’s final novel1, but it was written in a
decade when he mainly focused on collaborations. It was the last
novel he wrote without a partner.

It’s
also pretty good, which is fortunate for me because I would hate to
have to write a Graveyard Orbit review of an author’s last book if
that book was … ah … not up to their usual high standards.

Every
year, in the month leading up to the last full moon in October, two
factions—the Openers and the Closers—gather to determine the
course of the world for the next year. It is in their power to
determine which eldritch gates will be opened or very firmly closed.

In
18872, that last full moon fell on Halloween, which, one must
admit, is a very good date on which to determine the fate of the world.

The
participants are not always named, but they are all archetypes with
whom readers will be familiar: the brilliant professor and his
Monster, the Balkan aristocrat with an affinity for bats and a
dislike of sunshine, the mad Russian Monk, the Great Detective, and
of course the Londoner Jack and his marvellously sharp knife.

Doorways in the Sand —
Roger Zelazny

I get the impression that his star has dimmed somewhat since his untimely death in 1995, but during his prime—from the 1960s to the 1980s—Roger Zelazny was considered one of the great authors of science fiction. Corner a group of SF fans of the right age, reveal the implements of questioning,and they will fall all over themselves revealing which of Zelazny’s works they admire most.

My great shame is that not only did I miss some of his most famous stories—it took me until the 2000s to get around to “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”—but I didn’t care for such later-considered-classic books as I did encounter (like the early Amber novels). Worse yet, due to a quirk in my memory, I’ve forgotten almost entirely the contents of many of the books on my Zelazny shelf [1]. Lord of Light: forgotten! Creatures of Light and Darkness: forgotten! Nine Princes in Amber, except maybe for that first chapter: forgotten! But there are a few books that for some reason, I both liked and remembered.